Hacker Culture
By admin • Oct 25th, 2008 • Category: Uncategorized •
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Hacker Culture
Hacker Culture
By Douglas Thomas
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Number Of Pages: 266
Publication Date: 2002-03
ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0816633452
ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780816633456
Binding: Hardcover
Demonized by governments and the media as criminals, glorified within their own subculture as outlaws, hackers have played a major role in the short history of computers and digital culture-and have continually defied our assumptions about technology and secrecy through both legal and illicit means. In Hacker Culture, Douglas Thomas provides an in-depth history of this important and fascinating subculture, contrasting mainstream images of hackers with a detailed firsthand account of the computer underground.
Programmers in the 1950s and ’60s-”old school” hackers-challenged existing paradigms of computer science. In the 1960s and ’70s, hacker subcultures flourished at computer labs on university campuses, making possible the technological revolution of the next decade. Meanwhile, on the streets, computer enthusiasts devised ingenious ways to penetrate AT&T, the Department of Defense, and other corporate entities in order to play pranks (and make free long-distance telephone calls). In the 1980s and ’90s, some hackers organized to fight for such causes as open source coding while others wreaked havoc with corporate Web sites.
Even as novels and films (Neuromancer, WarGames, Hackers, and The Matrix) mythologized these “new school” hackers, destructive computer viruses like “Melissa” prompted the passage of stringent antihacking laws around the world. Addressing such issues as the commodification of the hacker ethos by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, the high-profile arrests of prominent hackers, and conflicting self-images among hackers themselves, Thomas finds that popular hacker stereotypes reflect the public’s anxieties about the information age far more than they do the reality of hacking.
Douglas Thomas is associate professor in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. He is coeditor (with Brian D. Loader) of Cybercrime: Law Enforcement, Security, and Surveillance in the Information Age (2000).
Summary: Bias of Hakcers
Rating: 4
When I first read this book, I just feel the content of it isn’t as interesting as the brand (maybe I am the one misinterpreted hacker), but when I look into it, I found it is interesting: a lot of abstract concepts have been linked together, in order to break our sound bias. through interpreting the history of hacker culture, Douglas want to figured out the real face behind hacker, and the relationship between technology and society. It’s really enjoying reading process when I went through the events which hackers “fight” with traditional orders, and was acknowledged that so many conspiracies behind those historical events, tried to figued out what is the real relationship behind “identity”, “code and performance” “surveillance”.
However, I had to say it’s really make me upset… to knowing these young skilled hacker professionals always been branded as “subculture”, “terrorists”…and they seems always been punished by traditional force, and living in the grey-area between virtual and reality.
If the accumulating of disconnected concepts are not really problems, I think Douglas’ attitude toward hacker is not really “justify”. He repeated that “they are not that evil”, “they are just young kids”, “they should not been branded as outsider,” “subversion of technology”, “as a subculture”… I knew he interviewed really a lot of hackers, using 7 years to investigate, listen to their stories, and tried to correct their public image, but is that another bias? It’s like standing at the highland of the mainstream culture and then look hackers down, showing a kind of companion and feel sorry for them. What’s more, he is also like an old nice grandpa, who is so kindly that pardoning those naughty boy’s mistakes, and then speak to his friends: “They are just kids, you don’t have to be so harsh to them!” However, it is still “subculture”, “subversion”, “separated personality”… I don’t think hackers are all young kids, those referred in the book are young because they are the first generation people who skilled at computer. As far as I know, at present, there are a lot of people made hacker as their job, they hired by one big company to attack its opponent; or making virus in order to help sell Firewall software…they are all adults, skilled and trained professionals has quite good income. I think to some extent, Douglas cleared one bias, but portrait another one, honestly speaking, this is even worse than the first.
Summary: Phreaks and Pr0phessors
Rating: 3
This is a cultural and political study of hackers as researched by an academic, and as a former academic myself, I can tell you a bit about how this process works. A professor takes a subject of general interest and beats it senseless by applying intellectual theory, and constructs the study for other professors who are more concerned with accepted research methods, rather than knowledgeable general readers who might have an interest in learning more about the subject. Here, Douglas Thomas uncovers a number of fascinating aspects of hacker culture. These include the recent increase in political activism by hackers, their contradictory stances on secrecy and freedom of information, the back-and-forth influence of cyberpunk and science fiction (with some interesting connections to authors William Gibson and Bruce Sterling), and especially how popular views on the criminality of hackers is really an outgrowth of society’s latent fears of technological domination.
This could have been a truly fascinating book if Thomas hadn’t decided to turn on the professorisms and flog this interesting material to death with tired and soggy theory. Thomas frequently namedrops the classic social theoreticians Foucault, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, an exercise that serves little purpose other than impressing Thomas’ fellow professors. He also unleashes windy over-analysis of the texts of outdated movies and magazines, as well as the influential Hacker Manifesto. His attempts to build up his annoying concepts of boy culture and the influence of the body on virtual identity mostly fizzle out (run for your life when you see an author whipping out terms like those), and the book often deteriorates into obtuse and fatuous academic language like the over-analytical “freedom and secrecy were decontextualized to the point of solipsism,” and pure useless professorial garbage like “the decomposition and recomposition of discourse.” At times this book is surprisingly interesting for an academic cultural study, but remember who wrote it and for whom. [~doomsdayer520~]
Summary: balanced, thought-provoking, and clear (really!)
Rating: 5
While people in previous reviews have complained that a) the prose is dense, and b) it’s out of date, I can say as an academic who has waded through most of the academic literature on hackers and hacker culture that Thomas’s prose, although indeed academic, is in contrast cystal clear. As well, his take on hackers is, in my opinion, more thorough and balanced than almost any other account I’ve seen.
What reviewers who want to either “watch the movie” or read an exciting book like “Cyberpunk” instead miss is that Thomas deconstructs both of these phenomena — hackers in fiction and hackers in bombastic nonfiction, to create a portrayal of hacker culture in the popular media as well as in “real life.” His aim is not just to talk about hackers but also the perception of hackers. Yes, it’s outdated (although how it could not be is difficult to say), but the truth is that most of the paradigm-setting portrayals of hackers were produced in the mid 1980s - mid 1990s, and as such the movies, fiction, journalism etc. from this time period are still quite relevant. It is not complete — I fault him for instance for only fully deconstructing a few movies — but it is by far the most complete in terms of showing both sides (fiction and reality, not hackers and law enforcement) that I have seen.
I would urge people, like the reviewer below, who are interested in hacker culture to visit sites like 2600; I would also urge them to read this book — please! — in addition to or instead of books like “Cyberpunk” and “The Cuckoo’s Egg.”
Summary: Hacker History, for the Unenlightened
Rating: 4
As others have mentioned in their reviews, this book was written by a highly academic author. Thus, the content is geared towards a college educated audience, or at least bright highschool students. As a computer engineering student, I found this book to be intruiging. Several hacking related movies were analyzed, and although slightly dated, these examples further the understanding of hacking history. The anecdotes are often amusing, and the main points of each section are deeply supported with sources and logical reasoning. Thomas’s overlying message is that the media cruelly slants the image of the benevolent hacker into one of a violent evil genius. I’d recommend this book to anyone above average computer user level, or those who have an interest in learning about computer history, and hackers in general.
Summary: A clear historical account
Rating: 5
I found this to be a remarkable work which does a lot of explain who hackers are and where they came from. While it is true that the book deals quite a bit with the 1990s, it does so from an historical perspective. I’m not sure exactly how history can be called “outdated.” I think what he was trying to say was that the movie Hackers influenced a generation of hackers, just as WarGames did a generation earlier. At least that was my reading.
This is definately an academic book, written by an academic, published by an academic press, so you have to expect that it will be over some people’s heads. It may have been smarter for the author to rely on more examples and stories and to not probe the issues quite so deeply or try to create a theory about who hackers are or what their cultural significance is in such a hostile, anti-intellectual climate. As for me, the book made me think.
Apparently that is too much work for some people. Not a light read, but “by my lights” not many things worth reading are. I mean since when has a favorable comparison to Henry James been considered an insult?
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